The one band Noel Gallagher called “the best of the past 30 years”
If you were to ask Noel Gallagher what the state of music was like when Oasis was around, it wouldn’t take him long to tell you how much they changed music.
The band may have looked like the most pretentious artists in the world when they first started making their debut record, but when Definitely Maybe and What’s the Story Morning Glory catapulted into the charts, we all had to have the real conversation that all of those assumptions had a few nuggets of truth to them. Noel had no problem reminding everyone, but he also knew how to be humble.
At least, to a certain degree. You see, if there’s one thing that the Gallaghers loved to do back in the day, it was to talk themselves up and talk shit. They had no problem giving their honest opinion if they thought that one of their contemporaries was releasing absolute trash, and even though things could get incredibly ugly when they feuded with Blur, it’s not like they were ever going to dial things back.
Noel knew when things could get out of hand with his words, but his ability to trash-talk was only matched by his reverence for his idols. You weren’t going to find anyone being more respectful towards The Smiths or The Jam, and even when the band had their public spat with their idols like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, it was easy for them to pay lip service to how they changed the world.
But if there was one hill that Noel was going to die on, it was talking about the merit behind U2. It’s not like the band had any major dip in quality when the Manchester legends started making waves, but they were slowly going down the road towards overexposure. They could definitely reinvent themselves if they wanted to, but it’s easy to start looking at them and think that their omnipresence was annoying, especially when Bono wouldn’t shut the hell up.
None of those detractors stopped Noel, though, saying in 2006, “U2 are the best band of the past 30 years. But we’re the best of the past 15. I think Bono himself would admit that.” And it’s not like that feeling wasn’t mutual when looking at the kind of relationship Bono had with the Oasis mastermind over the years.
Both of them were more than happy to tour with each other once Oasis split up, and Bono was even there during the band’s prime, marvelling at the kind of music that they could make together. Then again, it was going to be harder for Noel to defend them during Be Here Now, especially when they started abandoning rock and roll altogether to start working in the world of EDM on albums like Pop.
But judging by when Noel made that comment, it’s not like he was wrong. If we start at Boy and go all the way up to How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, there hadn’t been too many strikeouts. There was the odd embarrassing moment like Rattle and Hum, but given the fact that they were still relevant in an era that was starting to lose interest in rock and roll altogether, a track like ‘Vertigo’ felt a lot more important than the average rock and roll tune.
While the 2010s haven’t been nearly as kind to the band, thanks to their insistence on thrusting their music onto their listeners and desecrating their own legacy on Songs of Surrender, you can’t deny the run of albums that brought them to where they are today. The Irish icons have earned their spot in rock history, and even if they don’t get nearly the same amount of time in Liam Gallagher’s record collection, it’s easy to marvel at the legacy they left behind.
